The Masquerader

XXVIII

Loder's plan of action was arrived at before he reached Trafalgar Square. The facts of the case were simple. Chilcote had left an incriminating telegram on the bureau in the morning-room at Grosvenor Square; by an unlucky chance Lillian Astrupp had been shown up into that room, where she had remained alone until the moment that Eve, either by request or by accident, had found her there. The facts resolved themselves into one question. What use had Lillian made of those solitary moments? Without deviation, Loder's mind turned towards one answer. Lillian was not the woman to lose an opportunity, whether the space at her command were long or short. True, Eve too had been alone in the room, while Chilcote had accompanied Lillian to the door; but of this he made small account. Eve had been there, but Lillian had been there first. Judging by precedent, by personal character, by all human probability, it was not to be supposed that anything would have been left for the second comer.

So convinced was he that, reaching Trafalgar Square, he stopped and hailed a hansom.

“Cadogan Gardens!” he called. “No. 33.”

The moments seemed very few before the cab drew up beside the curb and he caught his second glimpse of the enamelled door with its silver fittings. The white and silver gleamed in the sunshine; banks of cream colored hyacinths clustered on the window-sills, filling the clear air with a warm and fragrant scent. With that strange sensation of having lived through the scene before, Loder left the cab and walked up the steps. Instantly he pressed the bell the door was opened by Lillian's discreet, deferential man-servant.

“Is Lady Astrupp at home?” he asked.

The man looked thoughtful. “Her ladyship lunched at home, sir—” he began, cautiously.

But Loder interrupted him. “Ask her to see me,” he said, laconically.

The servant expressed no surprise. His only comment was to throw the door wide.

“If you'll wait in the white room, sir,” he said, “I'll inform her ladyship.” Chilcote was evidently a frequent and a favored visitor.

In this manner Loder for the second time entered the house so unfamiliar—and yet so familiar in all that it suggested. Entering the drawing-room, he had leisure to look about him. It was a beautiful room, large and lofty; luxury was evident on every hand, but it was not the luxury that palls or offends. Each object was graceful, and possessed its own intrinsic value. The atmosphere was too effeminate to appeal to him, but he acknowledged the taste and artistic delicacy it conveyed. Almost at the moment of acknowledgment the door opened to admit Lillian.

She wore the same gown of pale-colored cloth, warmed and softened by rich furs, that she had worn on the day she and Chilcote had driven in the park.

She was drawing on her gloves as she came into the room; and pausing near the door, she looked across at Loder and, laughed in her slow, amused way.

“I thought it would be you,” she said, enigmatically.

Loder came forward. “You expected me?” he said, guardedly. A sudden conviction filled him that it was not the evidence of her eyes, but something at once subtler and more definite, that prompted her recognition of him.

She smiled. “Why should I expect you? On the contrary, I'm waiting to know why you're here?”

He was silent for an instant; then he answered in her own light tone. “As far as that goes,” he said, “let's make it my duty call-having dined with you. I'm an old-fashioned person.”

For a full second she surveyed him amusedly; then at last she spoke. “My dear Jack”—she laid particular stress on the name—“I never imagined you punctilious. I should have thought bohemian would have been more the word.”

Loder felt disconcerted and annoyed. Either, like himself, she was fishing for information, or she was deliberately playing with him. In his perplexity he glanced across the room towards the fireplace.

Lillian saw the look. “Won't you sit down?” she said, indicating the couch. “I promise not to make you smoke. I sha'n't even ask you to take off your gloves!”

Loder made no movement. His mind was unpleasantly upset. It was nearly a fortnight since he had seen Lillian, and in the interval her attitude had changed, and the change puzzled him. It might mean the philosophy of a woman who, knowing herself without adequate weapons, withdraws from a combat that has proved fruitless; or it might imply the merely catlike desire to toy with a certainty. He looked quickly at the delicate face, the green eyes somewhat obliquely set, the unreliable mouth; and instantly he inclined to the latter theory. The conviction that she possessed the telegram filled him suddenly, and with it came the desire to put his belief to the test—to know beyond question whether her smiling unconcern meant malice or mere entertainment.

“When you first came into the room,” he said, quietly, “you said 'I thought it would be you.' Why did you say that?”

Again she smiled—the smile that might be malicious or might be merely amused. “Oh,” she answered at last, “I only meant that though I had been told Jack Chilcote wanted me, it wasn't Jack Chilcote I expected to see!”

After her statement there was a pause. Loder's position was difficult. Instinctively convinced that, strong in the possession of her proof, she was enjoying his tantalized discomfort, he yet craved the actual evidence that should set his suspicions to rest. Acting upon the desire, he made a new beginning.

“Do you know why I came?” he asked.

Lillian looked up innocently. “It's so hard to be certain of anything in this world,” she said. “But one is always at liberty to guess.”

Again he was perplexed. Her attitude was not quite the attitude of one who controls the game, and yet—He looked at her with a puzzled scrutiny. Women for him had always spelled the incomprehensible; he was at his best, his strongest, his surest in the presence of men. Feeling his disadvantage, yet determined to gain his end, he made a last attempt.

“How did you amuse yourself at Grosvenor Square this morning before Eve came to you?” he asked. The effort was awkwardly blunt, but it was direct.

Lillian was buttoning her glove. She did not raise her head as he spoke, but her fingers paused in their task. For a second she remained motionless, then she looked up slowly.

“Oh,” she said, sweetly, “so I was right in my guess? You did come to find out whether I sat in the morning-room with my hands in my lap—or wandered about in search of entertainment?”

Loder colored with annoyance and apprehension. Every look, every tone of Lillian's was distasteful to him. No microscope could have revealed her more fully to him than did his own eyesight. But it was not the moment for personal antipathies; there were other interests than his own at stake. With new resolution he returned her glance.

“Then I must still ask my first question, why did you say, 'I thought it would be you?'” His gaze was direct—so direct that it disconcerted her. She laughed a little uneasily.

“Because I knew.”

“How did you know?”

“Because—” she began; then again she laughed. “Because,” she added, quickly, as if moved by a fresh impulse, “Jack Chilcote made it very obvious to any one who was in his morning-room at twelve o'clock today that it would be you and not he who would be found filling his place this afternoon! It's all very well to talk about honor, but when one walks into an empty room and sees a telegram as long as a letter open on a bureau—”

But her sentence was never finished. Loder had heard what he came to hear; any confession she might have to offer was of no moment in his eyes.

“My dear girl,” he broke in, brusquely, “don't trouble! I should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor.” He spoke quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of self-reliance; his paramount desire was for solitude in which to prepare for the task that lay before him; the most congenial task the world possessed—the unravelling of Chilcote's tangled skeins. Looking into Lillian's eyes, he smiled. “Good-bye!” he said, holding out his hand. “I think we've finished—for to-day.”

She slowly extended her fingers. Her expression and attitude were slightly puzzled—a puzzlement that was either spontaneous or singularly well assumed. As their hands touched she smiled again.

“Will you drop in at the 'Arcadian' to-night?” she said. “It's the dramatized version of 'Other Men's Shoes!' The temptation to make you see it was too irresistible—as you know.”

There was a pause while she waited for his answer—her head inclined to one side, her green eyes gleaming.

Loder, conscious of her regard, hesitated for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Right!” he said, slowly. “'The Arcadian' tonight!”